#and today he is carrying on the legacy while also introducing new ideas that benefit nature and make the surroundings greener.

[maxwell-grant]

So, any thoughts on The Green Lama (who unexpectedly became one of my faves), the Pulp Hero who is also a Superhero?

Much like other pulp heroes of the time, The Green Lama had multiple secret identities and a massive supporting cast aiding him in his quest for justice. Unlike his contemporaries, The Green Lama eschewed guns in favor of radioactive salts, magic, and sleight of hand. He rarely, if ever, killed his enemies. His tales also had an advanced sense of continuity, with characters growing and changing over time, plot points introduced in one story paying off several tales later. The Green Lama is a character of contradictions, driven forward by a faith he is forced to betray. It makes him flawed and imperfect, and in that way, one of the most human of all pulp heroes - The Green Lama: Scions

While not the "only" example of a pulp hero who is a superhero, The Green Lama is arguably the one who leans the most into the superhero aspect out of all the classic 30s pulp heroes that usually get brought up. I would argue that The Green Lama is the most direct answer to the question "what happens when you combine The Shadow and Superman together", considering he was modeled extensively after both in his forays into pulp, radio and comic books, and has also grown into his own character.

He's got the unique skills bordering on superpowers (that eventually became outright superpowers). He's got pretty much The Spectre's costume, except of course he came first. He's an urban costumed crimefighter wh deals with gangsters and criminal masterminds, and yet has an extremely strong stance against killing and carrying guns under any circumstance, even saying they would make him no better than the criminals he fights, which makes him by default the pulp hero that Batman would get along best with. The comics took it way further even turning the “Om Ma-ne Pad-me Hum” chant into a Shazam! transformation cry (Shazam came first, although the two debuted in the same year).

He's got a suitably punchy and dramatic origin: guy spends 10 years in Tibet and returns to America intend on spreading Buddhism's pacifist doutrine, only to witness the murder of children at the hands of mobsters the literal second he steps off the boat, and after spending restless days in the police station to see if they would find the culprit, he sees the killer walk out of the commissioner's office free, which convinces him he needs to take up crimefighting because the police are useless, and he outright calls the police "incompetent" in a letter to the papers that he uses to introduce himself to the world, which is not something you find often in 30s/40s fiction even if's an implicit part of the pulp hero/superhero fantasy.

He had a stronger sense of continuity than most pulp heroes were usually afforded. He has a lot of the pulp hero stock and trade like the assistants and the pseudo-science and the odd radio gadgets and of course the Orientalism that we'll get into, but remixed in a pretty cool way that allows him to stand out from his inspiration. He's got incredibly weird aspects to him like the fact that he gets enhanced abilities from crystallized salt or even becoming radioactive (which could be interesting to explore considering "radiation" became the go-to origin for superpowers in the 60s). He's got an allright supporting cast and Magga, while ultimately a deus ex machina, is a very interesting addition to it and I wish her mystery was played up more often in subsequent stories past the original run. There's a lot about The Green Lama that really works, he was incredibly successful at the time and he's managed to thrive over the years lot more than most of his contemporaries

Despite all the powers he wielded he felt impotent, nothing more than a rich boy playing the games of gods. He had chosen the path of the Bodhisattva, sacrificing himself for the good of all sentient beings, but even so the weight of responsibility, the lives of so many in his hands, threatened to crush him. It was tempting to turn away, to deny his calling, but the life of a Bodhisattva demanded more; and it was only recently that he had begun to realize how much it truly required.

The main problem with The Green Lama, and by problem I mean "the character works fine for his time but this is seriously holding him back from becoming sustainable again", is the fact that he's a white rich man who fights crime by going as hard into Orientalism tropes as possible, which is inescapably baked into the premise.

Now, I will argue that The Green Lama was, for his time, a progressive character. The Buddhist aspects of his character weren't just backstory fodder or an excuse for his superpowers as they were to pretty much every other character at the time, Jethro was a practicing Buddhist, who fought crime informed by his beliefs, trying to respect them (and not exactly succeeding) and offering a wholly positive perspective of Buddhism. Nowadays, it creates a problem, but at the time, it made the character stand out from every other hero who had "traveled to Tibet" checked out, because Tibet and Buddhism were heavily incorporated into the character. The Lama may have been born merely out of a desire to cash in on The Shadow's newfound radio popularity, but Crossen took it much more seriously than his contemporaries and made it an effort to instill admiration in his readers towards what he was referencing, which he was pulling from books about the subject and the Pali language. Is research the bare minimum? Yes. But it’s a bare minimum that even today’s writers don’t do even having an infinitely bigger wealth of information at their disposal. 

To further cement my point: There's a particular Green Lama comic story called The Four Freedoms, which is about the Lama receiving a letter from a fan in the army who's worried about a racist private who keeps insulting the black privates while crowing about racial superiority, and so the Lama kidnaps the private and takes him on a tour through Germany so he can witness firsthand how his talk aligns with Nazi ideology, even specifically referring to Jim Crow's laws, criticizing how easily Americans fall for racial war rhetoric, and pointing out the idea of racism as a tool of tyrants to divide and conquer. It's not my place to champion this as some great representation and that's not what I'm doing, but if this all seems passe or simplistic or even problematic to you, trust me, this was still the era of Slap-A-Jap Superman, stories like this were absolutely not the norm at the time, even in other stories where superheroes dealt with racial discrimination.

He even caps off the story by stating that punching or ending Hitler is not the solution (although he lets Jones take a couple of swings) because Hitler is just one part of a much bigger problem that needs to be fought on all of it's forms. It's all very much afterschool special/anti-racism PSA, sure, but it's easier to mock those in our time. You find me a Golden Age superhero comic that shits on Jim Crow specifically while the hero tells the reader that Hitler is not the ultimate evil but merely "a cog in the wheel", part of a problem that's deeply entrenched in America's own shores (really, do, I'm genuinely curious if more of them did anything like this).

Does any part of what I said negates the fact that, at the end of the day, he's still a white man using Orientalism mysticism to fight crime? No, it doesn't. And if Iron Fist can't get away with it, if Dr Strange only just barely does, the Green Lama sure as hell can't. And you cannot downplay those aspects either lest you end up with a completely different character. It's a bit of a conundrum that makes the character tricky to approach from a revival perspective.

I completely agree with what you said here, Green Lama would benefit from a Legacy Hero approach very strongly. And Green Lama: Scions opens up an interesting possibility of Jethro Dumont not being quite what he seems, backed up by the fact that he wore disguise make-up in the original stories:

They had a lot of names for him in the papers—the Verdant Avenger, the Mysterious Man of Strength—but Reynolds had always been partial to “Buddhist Bastard.” No one had ever seen his face or, at the very least, the same face. Seemed like everyone had a different story. The Green Lama was white, he was black, he was asian, he was old, and he was young. You could fill a room of witnesses and no two would describe the same person.

Really I think if you just got rid of that one thing that holds the Lama back the most from catching on in modern times, I think he's the kind of character that lends itself a lot to long-term sustainability. He's already fairly popular as is, definitely an indispensable inclusion of any shared pulp hero or Golden Age superhero universe and definitely one of my favorites among the 30s American pulp heroes. And there’s ways to make the concept more interesting and workable.

Maybe The Green Lama is just a title that's been going on for generations, with Jethro being one of many to fill in. Maybe Magga used to be it, maybe the tulku that instructed Jethro did, maybe there's a new character with it. Maybe Jethro is just an identity used by an Asian-American adventurer to operate safely in the US, or maybe Jethro has a sort of Lamont Cranston arrangement going on. Maybe he's part of the reason why Tibet was the superpower capital of the world in the 30s or 40s, or part of the reason why radiation started granting so many heroes superpowers in the 60s.

The character's skillset has been fairly "anything goes" ever since his author made him a flying superman for the comics, and really he already started out being able to deliver electric shocks through his fingers by guzzling radioactive salts. He's a very weird character, and I will always argue that weird is what works best for the pulp heroes.

[gncrevan]

/post/170127287928/sniper-at-the-gates-of-heaven-wild-how-some I found this post of yours really interesting; where do you see this undercurrent manifesting?

Hey, I left this question unanswered for a while because I wanted to give it the attention it deserves. I am currently on holiday, so I finally have the time to address it.

For everyone else reading: the original post was about the influence of Nazi ideology after 1945 and I voiced the opinion that you still encounter a lot of it, often masked differently. Most of the sources I will link are in German because this is obviously not something that is being dealt with outside of Germany a lot, and many are quite recent because it has taken this long for the public media to address this part of our cultural history. Critical voices were often silenced and are almost forgotten now. In fact, critical voices are still silenced if they dare to say that this recent history is still present our views today. I will translate passages that I quote or paraphrase.

To understand the real effects of Nazi ideology after 1945, we first have to look at the influence Nazis still had in the 50s and 60s. Here is a list of former NSDAP members who went on to have a political career in the FGR (Federal German Republic). Please note that membership in the NSDAP was never a legal requirement and that you only “had” to join if you had any political or economic ambitions in the Nazi state, which meant supporting the ideology at worst and accepting it for your own gain at best. There were absolutely no guilt-free NSDAP members. All of them were Nazis, either because they believed in it or because they considered it to be ok if it benefited them.

In 1951, the Bundestag decided that all civil servants had a right to re-employment. Over 90% of former Nazi civil servants made it back into civil service: as politicians, jurists, teachers, public officials. “Not a single judge and not a single state attorney has been legally convicted for their crimes as part of the NS justice system.”

After the occupation, the old jurisprudence was simply reactivated, with the same staff that had served in the Third Reich. Most of this staff had been members of the NSDAP, all of them had carried out their will. “The young, terribly capable NS jurists experiences the peak of their careers in the sixties. They shaped the young Republic.” They received promotions and political influence. Hans Globke, who wrote an annotation that put the Nuremberg Laws on legal ground, became Secretary of State. Hans Puvogel, whose dissertation advocated for racist cleansing and eugenics, became Minister of Justice in Lower Saxony. Edmund de Chapeaurouge, former judge for race defilement charges, and Rudolf Weber-Lortsch, former SS leader, resided at the Federal Administrative Court until the mid-seventies. Former Nazi judge Willi Geiger served as president of the Federal Court of Justice and associate in the Federal Constitutional Court until 1977.

Germany’s first Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, was literally a Nazi sympathizer. While he had shown contempt for Hitler and the NSDAP as a politician of the Weimar Republic, and openly denounced them (in favour of monarchism, I might add), he later had no qualms putting a lot of former Nazis in his cabinet, and called SS soldiers “decent people”. Notable Nazis and former Waffen-SS in Adenauer’s/Kiesinger’s cabinet:

Karl Carstens, member of the NSDAP and SA, who used his later position as President to give political positions to other former Nazis, such as Bernhard Hinrichs

Hans Filbinger, a former NS judge

Hans Globke, see above

Kurt Georg Kiesinger, NSDAP member and propaganda liaison of the Foreign Office’s broadcasting department, who went on to become Chancellor in 1966

Theodor Oberländer, SA-Obersturmbandführer, assistant to Erich Koch, strong supporter of the ethnic cleansing of Slavic countries

Franz Josef Strauß, Oberleutnant of the Werhmacht, Nazi educator and “Offizier für wehrgeistige Führung”

Ernst von Weizsäcker, served as Secretary of the Foreign Office and Ambassador to the Vatican in the Third Reich

Maybe the most sinister way Nazi ideology continued to fester was through education. In the 1950s, a large majority former Nazi teachers and professors were allowed back into schools. “Everybody had to fill in a “de-Nazification form”, then everyone who had joined the NSDAP before 1933 was dismissed from service. However, a majority would later be reinstated into schools. That was in part because about 95% of people were somehow conntected to National Socialism, and “you can’t make a state with only five percent”, as contemporary mayor [of Hamburg] Max Brauer once said. Of course many tried to wash their hands of it and denied their involvement in the Nazi system, or claimed they had been acting under duress. If you didn’t have a chance to re-enter teaching [in one Bundesland], you could often do so in one of the others, sometimes under a false identity.”

These teachers continued to work and influence children, often using Nazi disciplinary measures such as excessive violence, putting great emphasis on physical fitness, openly spouting racist, antisemitic and eugenicist ideology, harassing and abusing Jewish, non-white, disabled and leftist children under their “care”. Famous authors Ralph Giordano (Jewish) and Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi (mixed Black) who both had Nazi teachers later reported this made them suicidal, incited violence against them from other children, and affected them for their whole life. On the other hand, as part of the rising interest in pedagogy in the 1960s and 70s, there was also a revival of the teachings of Peter Petersen. The reform educationalist had created the “Jenaplan” which was now the basis for a school reform -- but he had also written about Hitler as the “educator of the people”, sung the highest praise to the SS and SA, vocally supported eugenics and biological racism.

Now I am not saying that every concept is tainted because of its inventor, and there are definitely good ideas in the Jenaplan, but the problem is that Petersen’s Nazi history was conveniently ignored and swept under the rug instead of openly discussed. This behaviour is a constant in the way we have dealt with our living history, and it is the breeding ground for Nazi ideology to go unnoticed, to weasel itself into our minds undetected, to make itself look harmless and totally detached from its violent history.

That is what I mean when I speak of an undercurrent of Nazi ideology in Germany today. Because as long as we do not confront where our ideas and teachings and cultural norms come from, and what might lie behind them, we will always repeat things that have been brought into the world by the Nazis. It was them who introduced Mother’s Day and built our autobahn and we have to be aware of why that is and what purpose that served in order not to romanticize their actions and accept their ideas. It was former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers who told us that our history doesn’t mean we cannot be patriotic, and that we should be patriotic, and if you do not question why that rhetoric came from people who openly served Hitler and murdered Jewish people and was eaten up by all those “good and innocent Germans”, you’re really not using your head to think. We still use Nazi terminology like “Endsieg”, “Endlösung”, “Anschluss”, “ausmerzen”, “ausrotten”, “entartet”, “Untermensch”, “Sonderbehandlung”, “Umsiedlung”, “Schutzhaft”, “Führer” and we should really question why we don’t feel sick every time we hear these phrases, why we don’t change our language, what mindset this reflects.

There is a reason why the AfD is in our Bundestag now and why people have no qualms blaming the foreigners and refugees for everything that goes wrong. There is a reason why I hear customers at work openly proclaim that Hitler wasn’t all that wrong, that he did good things for Germans, and that we need a strong leader. There’s a reason why a client who is a Social Democrat is talking about how the immigrants are all criminals. There’s a reason why every week my boss reads news headlines to me about how immigrant men rape German women and how foreigners bleed the German state dry. There’s a reason why they feel perfectly safe doing that. Germany hasn’t changed all that much. Nazis, racists, antisemites, fascists have always been in our midst. And we have covered for them.

The only way to truly oppose Nazism is to be vigilant about the ways in which it still informs our society. To never let anyone forget. Always bring up our history, our crimes. Don’t let the people feel safe in their complacency. Everybody is all too comfortable pretending that this is “over” and we don’t have to care about it anymore. But we do have to care! We have to be critical of ourselves and others! These people were our grandparents, our politicians, our parents’ teachers. These people are still in part alive and those who aren’t made sure to pass on their legacy to the next generation. And we are only one generation removed from that. We are part of it, and that is why we need to confront it.

Further sources (also German):

A collection of news articles from Der Spiegel about Nazis after 1945

Baby rearing methods from the Third Reich are still common

About the recent history of pedagogy

The Nazi jargon of AfD members

German authors returning from exile were shocked that there was “no reaction to what had happened”

Feel free to add if you have any good reads!

Do you like this post and the effort I have put into writing it? Then consider leaving me a tip on ko-fi. Thank you!

[ashfaqqahmad]

A Journey of mankind Final

Economization of Homo sapiens  

Click here to read the back part of this article

Societies have thrived on three main systems religious, economic and political. When the Sapiens started settling permanently quitting roaming around, they needed a religious system for mutual co-operation and when small societies were established with permanent settlements, the need of an economic system for its better operation was felt. And when they adopted both these systems, then the need of political system was realised for running mass societies collectively.  

Where did religion come from and how logical from the point of view of science?

Small societies shaped the state system and by combining these systems an empire was formed. An empire is a political system which means acceptable governance over many societies which have separate identity, culture and independent jurisdiction.

But the side effects of this system later proved to be dangerous for thousands of smaller cultures which were taken over by the big empires. For the last two and a half thousand years, every citizen of the world has been ruled by some form of empire.

The Roman Empire took over hundreds of societies such as the Numantians, Avarians, Helvetian, Samnites, Lucentians, Umbrians, Istrakanians whose people identified themselves as citizens of those societies, spoke their languages, worshipped their Gods, narrated their legends. Their descendants, under the rule of Romans, started thinking, speaking and worshipping like them. The same thing was done by the Islamic empire between the seventh and the tenth century, which took over the cultures of the entire gulf region.

what possibilities are there in the universe outside our planet

Origin of first code

Now when the empires started to be formed, the need of that system which we know as legal manuals was realized that is, the determination of crimes by a state system and the punishment to be given in that proportion. The first such code recorded in history is known as the  code of Hammurabi which came into existence in 1776 BC in Babylon. Babylon was the biggest city in Mesopotamia and the largest empire at the time which extended to most of Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, Syria and parts of Iran. Hammurabi was immortal as a king because of that legal code.

You will find many Muslims saying that they had introduced the legal system in society as shara but this is not true. Shara was the refined form of the Code of Hammurabi which was also adopted by later Jewish and Christian societies with some amendments in the same way. Although thousands of kilometers away from those societies of Europe and West Asia, the Law Code in the form of Manusmriti existed even in India, since there is no fixed era, such credit is not given to it on the world stage, but it is certain that it also dates before shara.

If God is there then how can it be from the point of view of science

However, if we now focus on empires, the first such empire was the Akkadian Empire of Sargon the Great beginning in 2250 BC from the city of Kish in Mesopotamia. Sargon not only managed to conquer Mesopotamian cities/states but also expanded his empire from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf and was the first ruler in history to claim that he had conquered the whole world.

Origin of empires

Sargon established such a concept of imperialism, that for the next 1700 years, the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Hittite kings continued to adopt that as a role model of Sargon, also claiming to be world conquerors. In 550 BC Cyrus the Great carried this tradition even more effectively stating that we are winning you for your benefit.

The idea of ruling the whole world for the sake of the inhabitants of the whole world was shocking, but from the time of Cyrus, this imperialist stream became even more inclusive and widespread. Later from Alexander the Great, Hellenistic kings, Roman emperors, Muslim caliphs, Hindustani dynasties, it reached Soviet princes and American presidents.

Along with this, other kingdoms which were democratic or at least republican, for example the English empire, which was the biggest empire in history, or the Dutch, French, Belgian, and former American kingdoms as well as Novgorod, Rome, Carthage, the pre-modern kingdom of Athens also remained for a long time.

what are the possibilities for new writers

The imperialist ideology along the lines of Cyrus developed independently in Central America, Adean and China apart from its Persian model. According to China’s traditional political theory, heaven is the source of all legitimate entities on earth, the authority of heaven selects the person or family most eligible for governance and gives them the mandate of heaven. The first emperor of the United Chinese Empire, Qin Shi Huang claimed that everything in all the six directions of the world belongs to the emperor.

While the empires consolidated many small and big cultures, the process of imposing their own culture continued at the same time. We can understand this by applying it to our country and ourselves. Today’s India is the result of imperial Britain where the British committed all kinds of atrocities on the inhabitants of this subcontinent, killed them but they also united the princely states, empires fighting with each other and despite such tribal diversity, played an important role in building a shared political consciousness.

How to write a book in Microsoft word

They laid the foundation of the judiciary, created the administrative structure, set up a network of railways having a decisive importance in terms of economic integration. After independence, India also adopted the British model of western democracy. English is still the only contact language of the entire subcontinent. Every Indian is crazy about cricket and tea, given by the British. How many Indians will be able to reject these legacies imposed by the British empire in the name of their own culture? Have we not now accepted them or the legacy as our own culture, left behind by the Muslim kings called as foreigners?

इस लेख को हिंदी में पढ़ने के लिये यहाँ क्लिक करें

[mastcomm]

Trump Signs Trade Deal With Canada and Mexico

WASHINGTON — President Trump signed the revised North American Free Trade Agreement into law on Wednesday, fulfilling a key campaign promise and bringing more than two years of tumultuous negotiations over the continent’s trade rules to a close.

The trade deal, now called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, updates the quarter-century-old NAFTA, with stronger protections for workers and the digital economy, expanded markets for American farmers and new rules to encourage auto manufacturing in North America.

“Today we are finally ending the NAFTA nightmare and signing into law the brand-new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement,” Mr. Trump said during a signing ceremony at the White House.

“For the first time in American history, we have replaced a disastrous trade deal that rewarded outsourcing with a truly fair and reciprocal trade deal that will keep jobs, wealth and growth right here in America,” he said.

The deal will restore certainty about the direction of the North American economy for the multitude of companies that depend on the rules to carry out their businesses. While the Trump administration reached an agreement with Canada and Mexico more than a year ago, it came after months of tense negotiations that included a threat by the president to leave Canada out of the deal completely.

And the agreement’s fate remained in question for most of the past year, given concerns among congressional Democrats, whose support was needed to approve the pact, that the new deal had not included strong enough provisions related to labor, the environment and access to pharmaceuticals.

The deal constitutes an important political victory for Mr. Trump and his second trade win of the month. The president signed an initial trade pact with China at the White House just two weeks ago, giving him crucial talking points as he heads into his re-election campaign. While his deals with China and other countries like Japan and South Korea are smaller than traditional trade agreements, Mr. Trump will be able to claim that he has renegotiated trade terms with countries responsible for more than half of American trade.

The president wasted little time in touting the new North American trade deal, calling it a “colossal victory” for farmers and factory workers and the “largest, fairest, most balanced and modern trade agreement ever achieved.”

Mr. Trump has long derided the original NAFTA, and he frequently threatened to rip it up entirely if Canada, Mexico or congressional Democrats would not agree to his new rules.

He came into office with an executive order drafted to begin the process of withdrawing from NAFTA and nearly signed it on several occasions. But more moderate advisers and business contacts repeatedly dissuaded the president from scrapping the deal.

The 26-year-old agreement, which was negotiated by the George Bush administration and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, has since become a political target, derided for encouraging American companies to move factories and jobs to Mexico.

Many economists have a more sanguine view of NAFTA’s legacy, saying the deal provided a positive, if small, benefit to American wages and employment. It allowed industries to reorganize their supply chains around North America and take advantage of the differing resources and strengths of the three countries. The deal helped to more than triple America’s trade with Canada and Mexico.

But the opening of borders has come at a cost. Some Americans, particularly those with less education, lost out as factories moved to Mexico, taking jobs with them.

Gordon Hanson, an economist at the Harvard Kennedy School, said studies have found that average incomes rose in all three countries as a result of the trade deal, though by a small magnitude. But the deal’s benefits were very unevenly distributed around the United States.

“We can certainly find places where jobs are lost as a result of increased trade with Mexico, as well as places where jobs were gained as a result of increased trade with Mexico,” Mr. Hanson said.

The government programs that were designed to help workers adjust to these changes proved to be a Band-Aid for a deep wound that never healed. As China’s 2001 entry into the global economy accelerated the loss of American factory jobs, NAFTA became a potent symbol for labor unions, many Democrats and Mr. Trump of where American trade policy went wrong.

The Trump administration began its renegotiation of NAFTA in August 2017 with harsh words for Canada and Mexico, with the president’s top trade adviser saying the pact had “fundamentally failed many, many Americans and needs major improvement.”

Talks were initially expected to wrap up by the end of 2017, but negotiations lingered well into the next year as officials from all three countries scrabbled over issues like dairy-market access, federal-government contracts and systems for settling trade disputes. Business groups were alarmed by several of Mr. Trump’s proposals, including the idea of injecting a “sunset provision” into the deal that could cause it to automatically expire.

The Trump administration also deployed hardball tactics with Canada and Mexico, placing tariffs on their steel and aluminum and threatening to tax their cars as well. In the final stages of negotiations, when the United States was at odds with Canada over issues like agriculture, Mr. Trump threatened to turn NAFTA into a bilateral deal with Mexico, leaving Canada out entirely.

At a meeting in Buenos Aires in November 2018, Mr. Trump joined the leaders of Canada and Mexico in signing the revised deal. But he still faced an uphill path to get the pact approved in Congress, particularly the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

“I hope he understands what he’s signing today,” Ms. Pelosi said at a news conference, holding up a fact sheet outlining the changes Democrats secured for labor, enforcement, environment and prescription drugs. “Just because he’s the person signing it would not be a reason we would not do something good for the American people”

On Capitol Hill, Democrats sought to remind people that the pact would not have won overwhelming bipartisan support without their changes, particularly the updates to labor enforcement.

“The only reason that the president is having a signing today is because of what we did as Democrats,” Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said at an infrastructure news conference.

Some Democrats were quick to point out that the deal being celebrated by Republicans at the White House was far more in line with Democratic priorities than with traditional conservative ones.

“It actually kind of puts a smile on my face,” said Representative Jimmy Gomez, Democrat of California, in an interview. “It’s ironic. They’re lauding the most progressive trade deal in the history of this country.”

“They should send her a box of chocolates,” Mr. Gomez said of Ms. Pelosi, who has a famous penchant for chocolate, particularly from California. “Dark. Ghirardelli.”

The new trade deal faces one final hurdle before it can go into effect: It still needs to be approved in Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government’s first action when Parliament resumed after an extended break on Monday was introducing legislation to carry out the trade pact, which it calls the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.

Because Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party does not hold a voting majority in the House of Commons, the bill will require opposition support to pass. All three major opposition parties have various complaints. But many local and provincial politicians, labor and business leaders are calling for quick approval, making the legislation’s defeat unlikely.

Chrystia Freeland, the deputy prime minister, urged the opposition parties to work with the government to pass the bill swiftly.

“This is a victory for all Canadians of every political persuasion and from all regions of our great country,” she said in a news conference.

Ian Austen contributed reporting from Ottawa.

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/trump-signs-trade-deal-with-canada-and-mexico/

[lodelss]

ACLU: Why have a forum on reparations in Charleston and why now?

Why have a forum on reparations in Charleston and why now?

This year marks 400 years since enslaved, kidnapped people were purchased by the forefathers and – mothers of America. Are the events that began 400 years ago connected to today? William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” 

On June 19, 2019, the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) held a forum on H.R. 40 in the historic Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, D.C. As a follow up to that event, NAARC and the ACLU are joining with the ACLU of South Carolina and Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream to sponsor a second forum on H.R. 40 and reparations entitled: From Enslavement to Reparations: A 400-Year Journey for Justice.  

The event will be held on Saturday, November 2nd at 1 pm at the Gaillard Center in Charleston, South Carolina.

Why Charleston?

The first step to any successful reparations program is a reckoning – acknowledging and addressing the effects of past mistakes. When you attempt to understand America’s 246-year history of enslaving Black people, it is critical to understand that the Civil War didn’t end white supremacy in America. Rather, it heralded in a new era of white supremacy in different forms – Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes, “separate but equal” being affirmed by the Supreme Court, redlining to prevent Blacks from becoming homeowners and the war on drugs ushering in mass incarceration. When trying to understand how these legacies of white supremacy have impacted America in 2019, there is no better place to begin than Charleston.

The American Slave Coast by Ned and Constance Sublette explains how Charleston played a key role in the two primary phases of the slave trade. Charleston’s location was an ideal landing place for ships carrying human cargo during the importation phase, which lasted until around 1808. The domestic breeding stage, which began after America outlawed the importation of enslaved people, helped maintain the slave populations through the mass rape of Black women to produce new slaves. . The American Slave Coast reminds us that many white plantation owners used the term “natural increase” to describe this horrific practice. The International African American Museum estimates that 80 percent of African Americans can trace their roots back to Charleston. 

Founded in 1670, Charleston was the 5th largest city in the country just 30 years later in 1700. By 1708, a census found that South Carolina was 42.5 percent white, 42.5 percent Black, and 15 percent enslaved Native American.

While the existence of slavery was never a question to the new American nation, who was going to profit from slavery was a matter of great concern. The newly ratified United States Constitution guaranteed that the “Migration or Importation of such persons” (enslaved human beings) could not be prohibited by Congress until 1808.

South Carolina was concerned that although a state could not pass a law prohibiting the trade until 1808, the Constitution itself could be amended before then South Carolina was concerned that because a state could not pass a law prohibiting the trade until 1808, the Constitution would be amended before then. South Carolina doubled down to protect its interests and found its answer in Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution which prevented any amendment of Article 1 Section 9 until 1808.  Not surprisingly, in 1807, South Carolina merchants imported the highest volume of enslaved people in any one-year period in the history of the North American slave trade. 

The trade routes and contacts that were used during the international trade continued to create wealth and privilege for white people in Charleston even after the international slave trade ended, via the domestic slave trade.

Charleston’s recent apology for the role it played in the buying and selling of enslaved people in America is a start, but not enough.  If Charleston – and America – is to truly have a reckoning with our past, action must follow the apology. For example, Charleston’s segregated schools and neighborhoods withstood the test of civil rights laws and the Fair Housing Act, and Charleston is still one of the most segregated cities in America. A jury in North Charleston refused to convict the police officer who murdered Walter Scott. Most recently, the murder of nine innocent African American churchgoers at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston are still painfully fresh in our collective consciousness.

Charleston continues to be proud of John C. Calhoun, who was a prominent South Carolina politician for almost three decades. Calhoun also was a proud racist who made it clear that he saw a major difference between white people and Black people being quoted as saying, “with us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals, if honest and industrious; and hence have a position and pride of character of which neither poverty nor misfortune can deprive them.”” Calhoun also believed that the freedom of one race depended on the bondage of the other. “I fearlessly assert that the existing relation between the two races in the South, against which these blind fanatics are waging war, forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions.” 

The Gaillard Center in downtown Charleston, where this forum will be hosted, shares a disturbing commonality with Mother Emanuel AME Church – they are both located on Calhoun Street. The remains of enslaved people were also found in the 2013 structural renovations of the Gaillard Center. It’s clear that in Charleston, the past is not dead – it’s alive and well.

Why Now?

The arguments in favor of reparations have been known and recognized for decades. Individual efforts began immediately following the Civil War. Members of the National African American Reparations Commission have fought for reparations since before Representative John Conyers introduced H.R. 40 for the first time in 1988. This is not a new struggle, so what is different now?

The advocacy of those who have been engaged in the struggle for reparations for decades have worked like water on stone, never letting the potential promise of reparations die. Additionally, new voices have added to the movement for America’s reckoning with its past. Ta-Nehisi Coates article “The Case for Reparations” continues to impact people. Groups like Movement for Black Lives and efforts like The 1619 Project from the New York Times have brought new ideas to the table. H.R. 40 now has 118 cosponsors – before this year it never had more than 52.

Much of the critique of the renewed light shone on the history of enslaved people by projects like the New York Times 1619 Project can be put into two broad categories: 1) Why do you hate America? 2) Reparations would unfairly hold people accountable for something they never did or benefitted from.  Here is why both are wrong.

Some people confuse critiquing America with hating America. True love allows for and encourages criticism, especially when it relates to an issue like racial justice. The refusal to look at our history and our present circumstance in order to find the unvarnished truth is a betrayal of the principles our country claims to hold dear. At the end of the day, you cannot support reparations unless you truly love America. Not a superficial love, but rather the kind of love that demands that we face the truth because we will be better for it.

What about the complaint that the Civil War ended 154 years ago and Blacks in America need to get over it?  Our history is full of proof that demonstrates the legacy of slavery has had a continual impact on criminal law, economic and educational opportunity, access to quality health care, and housing in America. This objection is countered by the provisions of H.R. 40. Before there can be any recommendations about reparations, a committee will have to investigate our history to see if the facts justify a system of reparations and let the truth come out.

In We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke to the true reason why a caricature has been made of the movement for reparations. He said, “Mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter”. It’s time for our country to quit hiding behind that mask of fear and finally reckon with our past.

Published November 1, 2019 at 01:27AM via ACLU https://ift.tt/2BWnHmm from Blogger https://ift.tt/2N7ogjH via IFTTT

[nancydhooper]

Why have a forum on reparations in Charleston and why now?

This year marks 400 years since enslaved, kidnapped people were purchased by the forefathers and – mothers of America. Are the events that began 400 years ago connected to today? William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” 

On June 19, 2019, the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) held a forum on H.R. 40 in the historic Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, D.C. As a follow up to that event, NAARC and the ACLU are joining with the ACLU of South Carolina and Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream to sponsor a second forum on H.R. 40 and reparations entitled: From Enslavement to Reparations: A 400-Year Journey for Justice.  

The event will be held on Saturday, November 2nd at 1 pm at the Gaillard Center in Charleston, South Carolina.

Why Charleston?

The first step to any successful reparations program is a reckoning – acknowledging and addressing the effects of past mistakes. When you attempt to understand America’s 246-year history of enslaving Black people, it is critical to understand that the Civil War didn’t end white supremacy in America. Rather, it heralded in a new era of white supremacy in different forms – Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes, “separate but equal” being affirmed by the Supreme Court, redlining to prevent Blacks from becoming homeowners and the war on drugs ushering in mass incarceration. When trying to understand how these legacies of white supremacy have impacted America in 2019, there is no better place to begin than Charleston.

The American Slave Coast by Ned and Constance Sublette explains how Charleston played a key role in the two primary phases of the slave trade. Charleston’s location was an ideal landing place for ships carrying human cargo during the importation phase, which lasted until around 1808. The domestic breeding stage, which began after America outlawed the importation of enslaved people, helped maintain the slave populations through the mass rape of Black women to produce new slaves. . The American Slave Coast reminds us that many white plantation owners used the term “natural increase” to describe this horrific practice. The International African American Museum estimates that 80 percent of African Americans can trace their roots back to Charleston. 

Founded in 1670, Charleston was the 5th largest city in the country just 30 years later in 1700. By 1708, a census found that South Carolina was 42.5 percent white, 42.5 percent Black, and 15 percent enslaved Native American.

While the existence of slavery was never a question to the new American nation, who was going to profit from slavery was a matter of great concern. The newly ratified United States Constitution guaranteed that the “Migration or Importation of such persons” (enslaved human beings) could not be prohibited by Congress until 1808.

South Carolina was concerned that although a state could not pass a law prohibiting the trade until 1808, the Constitution itself could be amended before then South Carolina was concerned that because a state could not pass a law prohibiting the trade until 1808, the Constitution would be amended before then. South Carolina doubled down to protect its interests and found its answer in Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution which prevented any amendment of Article 1 Section 9 until 1808.  Not surprisingly, in 1807, South Carolina merchants imported the highest volume of enslaved people in any one-year period in the history of the North American slave trade. 

The trade routes and contacts that were used during the international trade continued to create wealth and privilege for white people in Charleston even after the international slave trade ended, via the domestic slave trade.

Charleston’s recent apology for the role it played in the buying and selling of enslaved people in America is a start, but not enough.  If Charleston – and America – is to truly have a reckoning with our past, action must follow the apology. For example, Charleston’s segregated schools and neighborhoods withstood the test of civil rights laws and the Fair Housing Act, and Charleston is still one of the most segregated cities in America. A jury in North Charleston refused to convict the police officer who murdered Walter Scott. Most recently, the murder of nine innocent African American churchgoers at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston are still painfully fresh in our collective consciousness.

Charleston continues to be proud of John C. Calhoun, who was a prominent South Carolina politician for almost three decades. Calhoun also was a proud racist who made it clear that he saw a major difference between white people and Black people being quoted as saying, “with us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals, if honest and industrious; and hence have a position and pride of character of which neither poverty nor misfortune can deprive them.”” Calhoun also believed that the freedom of one race depended on the bondage of the other. “I fearlessly assert that the existing relation between the two races in the South, against which these blind fanatics are waging war, forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions.” 

The Gaillard Center in downtown Charleston, where this forum will be hosted, shares a disturbing commonality with Mother Emanuel AME Church – they are both located on Calhoun Street. The remains of enslaved people were also found in the 2013 structural renovations of the Gaillard Center. It’s clear that in Charleston, the past is not dead – it’s alive and well.

Why Now?

The arguments in favor of reparations have been known and recognized for decades. Individual efforts began immediately following the Civil War. Members of the National African American Reparations Commission have fought for reparations since before Representative John Conyers introduced H.R. 40 for the first time in 1988. This is not a new struggle, so what is different now?

The advocacy of those who have been engaged in the struggle for reparations for decades have worked like water on stone, never letting the potential promise of reparations die. Additionally, new voices have added to the movement for America’s reckoning with its past. Ta-Nehisi Coates article “The Case for Reparations” continues to impact people. Groups like Movement for Black Lives and efforts like The 1619 Project from the New York Times have brought new ideas to the table. H.R. 40 now has 118 cosponsors – before this year it never had more than 52.

Much of the critique of the renewed light shone on the history of enslaved people by projects like the New York Times 1619 Project can be put into two broad categories: 1) Why do you hate America? 2) Reparations would unfairly hold people accountable for something they never did or benefitted from.  Here is why both are wrong.

Some people confuse critiquing America with hating America. True love allows for and encourages criticism, especially when it relates to an issue like racial justice. The refusal to look at our history and our present circumstance in order to find the unvarnished truth is a betrayal of the principles our country claims to hold dear. At the end of the day, you cannot support reparations unless you truly love America. Not a superficial love, but rather the kind of love that demands that we face the truth because we will be better for it.

What about the complaint that the Civil War ended 154 years ago and Blacks in America need to get over it?  Our history is full of proof that demonstrates the legacy of slavery has had a continual impact on criminal law, economic and educational opportunity, access to quality health care, and housing in America. This objection is countered by the provisions of H.R. 40. Before there can be any recommendations about reparations, a committee will have to investigate our history to see if the facts justify a system of reparations and let the truth come out.

In We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke to the true reason why a caricature has been made of the movement for reparations. He said, “Mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter”. It’s time for our country to quit hiding behind that mask of fear and finally reckon with our past.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/why-have-a-forum-on-reparations-in-charleston-and-why-now via http://www.rssmix.com/

[claudiacantara1-blog]

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[travelonlinetips-blog]

New Post has been published on https://travelonlinetips.com/what-are-the-rules-concerning-plus-size-passengers-on-flights/

What are the rules concerning plus-size passengers on flights?

A passenger on a long-haul flight is suing British Airways for what he claims is physical harm suffered after being seated next to a large fellow traveller. But how can overweight passengers be sensitively accommodated on increasingly crowded aircraft?

Are flights are getting more crowded with less personal space?

Yes. Long-suffering airline passengers are accustomed to the discomfort of modern flying. But now the squeeze really is on, with airlines cramming more seats into the same size economy cabin, both on short-haul and long-haul planes. BA and other “legacy” airlines are seeking to compete with the budget carriers by packing more seats into their short-haul fleets. And British Airways is halfway through a programme of “densifying” its Boeing 777 fleet at Gatwick, by fitting an extra 52 seats into each aircraft.

When the 777 was introduced 24 years ago, almost every schedule airline fitted each economy row with nine seats abreast. But now the trend is towards 10 abreast. Air Canada, for example, has revealed “new slimline seats in economy”.

What is happening to the size of passengers?

Read more

Aviation is a “one-size-fits-all” business, but passengers are increasing in girth. According to the most recent figures from NHS England, 26 per cent of adults are classed as obese – compared with 15 per cent a quarter-century ago. At the same time, airlines are getting much better at filling up their aircraft.

Twenty-five years ago, the average “load factor” – the proportion of seats occupied on each plane – was about 70 per cent, meaning there were plenty of spare places on the typical flight. Today, airlines such easyJet and Ryanair are in the mid-90s, which means an average of seven or eight seats spare – and, on many services, none at all. Good for the environment, not so good for those of us who like a bit of room to move.

You can’t blame the airlines for squeezing us in; they are responding to the relentless public demand for cheap flights. 

What are the options for plus-size passengers?

On long-haul flights, there’s a simple if unappetising solution: spend more. At the same time as airlines are making basic economy more basic, they are expanding premium economy – pay a bit more, get a bit more space. If you need a more than a bit of extra room, then you could move up to business class – though fares are often many times more than in economy.

For this reason, some larger passengers routinely buy two seats: Ryanair, the biggest budget airline, makes it relatively easy (providing you book the second under the name “Extra Comfort Seat”), while easyJet says its seats are 17.5 inches wide and if you are unable to fit into a single seat, “You will be required to purchase additional seats at the prevailing rates”.

Support free-thinking journalism and subscribe to Independent Minds

Virgin Atlantic urges passengers with a high body mass to book extra space, and stresses “you will not pay any passenger taxes, fees, charges or surcharges on the extra seat.”

British Airways says: “Our customers have individual needs so we discuss options and provide guidance on a case-by-case basis.”

The most benign solution is operated by Air France. It offers passengers who won’t comfortably into a single seats the chance to buy a second, adjacent seat at a 25 per cent discount – with the promise that, if there are any unoccupied seats in your cabin, you get a refund on the second seat.

What if a passenger who can’t comfortably fit into a standard seat just turns up?

Most of the time, if there is some space available, cabin crew will work sensitively and discreetly to find a suitable pair of seats to maximise comfort for the large passenger and minimise discomfort for fellow travellers.

Problems arise, as in the British Airways court case, when flights are full. Air France warns passengers who don’t avail of the extra-seat offer: “In the interest of safety, if the flight is full and you have not reserved an additional seat, you may not be allowed to board if your build does not permit you to sit comfortably in a single seat.”

Passengers who are denied boarding because of their size will not qualify for compensation, but they will generally be accommodated on the next available flight.

Do fellow passengers have the right to unimpeded use of their seat space – and can they demand an upgrade?

Legally, no. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) deals with obesity only in terms of its threat to pilots’ health. The authority requires seats to be configured to allow passengers to escape swiftly in an emergency. But the CAA is silent on encroachment.

British Airways has rules about behaviour “which causes discomfort, inconvenience, damage or injury to the crew or other passengers.” But having a high body mass and sitting passively in a seat cannot be classed as “unacceptable behaviour”.

If, in a full economy section, a possible solution involves re-seating someone in a premium cabin, there is no reason to assume that either the large passenger or their neighbour will get the benefit; airlines generally issue upgrades according to frequent-flyer status.

Should passengers be weighed at check in?

Ideally, yes – but not to embarrass or surcharge overweight people. Stepping on the scales at check-in is a good idea is for safety and environmental reasons.

Read more

To operate safely and efficiently, pilots need to know the weight of the plane and everything in it. The CAA assumes passengers and their presumed 6kg of hand baggage weigh an average of 84kg. Children under 12 are assumed to average 35kg. And each passenger’s checked-in baggage is deemed to average 13kg, though this is one thing that the airline should know with accuracy since all hold bags are weighed

If the captain knows the plane is carrying less weight than the “assumed mass”, he or she can load a little less fuel, which in turn uses less fuel to carry. Also, on routes where there is a restriction on passenger numbers because of range limitations, knowing exact weights can mean a plane carries more people – reducing the “footprint” per person. 

On small passenger planes, such as those used for safaris, it is essential for passengers to be weighed, in order to assign seats in a way that maximises safety. Wilderness Air in Zambia insists on knowing weights ahead of time, so it can plan its operation. Small planes are much less tolerant of “weight and balance” issues than bigger passenger aircraft.

But unless it is for safety reasons, passengers are unlikely to tolerate the indignity of being weighed at check-in.

How much hand baggage can you take on a Ryanair flight? Where should you be travelling in 2019? Can you claim compensation for a delayed flight?

Travel expert Simon Calder will be answering all your questions at our upcoming event, Ask Simon Calder.

Register your place today by logging into Independent Minds

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[nebris]

Unspeakable Realities Block Universal Health Coverage In America

Election 2016 has prompted a wave of head-scratching on the left. Counties Trump won by staggering margins will be among the hardest hit by the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Millions of white voters who supported Donald Trump stand to lose their access to health coverage because of their vote.

Individual profiles of Trump voters feed this baffling narrative. A Washington Post story described the experience of Clyde Graham, a long-unemployed coal worker who depends on the ACA for access to health care. He voted for Trump knowing it might cost him his health insurance out of his hope of capturing the great white unicorn – a new job in the mines. His stance is not unusual.

Why are economically struggling blue collar voters rejecting a party that offers to expand public safety net programs? The reality is that the bulk of needy white voters are not interested in the public safety net. They want to restore their access to an older safety net, one much more generous, dignified, and stable than the public system – the one most well-employed voters still enjoy.

When it seems like people are voting against their interests, I have probably failed to understand their interests. We cannot begin to understand Election 2016 until we acknowledge the power and reach of socialism for white people.

Americans with good jobs live in a socialist welfare state more generous, cushioned and expensive to the public than any in Europe. Like a European system, we pool our resources to share the burden of catastrophic expenses, but unlike European models, our approach doesn’t cover everyone.

Like most of my neighbors I have a good job in the private sector. Ask my neighbors about the cost of the welfare programs they enjoy and you will be greeted by baffled stares. All that we have is “earned” and we perceive no need for government support. Nevertheless, taxpayers fund our retirement saving, health insurance, primary, secondary, and advanced education, daycare, commuter costs, and even our mortgages at a staggering public cost. Socialism for white people is all-enveloping, benevolent, invisible, and insulated by the nasty, deceptive notion that we have earned our benefits by our own hand.

My family’s generous health insurance costs about $20,000 a year, of which we pay only $4,000 in premiums. The rest is subsidized by taxpayers. You read that right. Like virtually everyone else on my block who isn’t old enough for Medicare or employed by the government, my family is covered by private health insurance subsidized by taxpayers at a stupendous public cost. Well over 90% of white households earning over the white median income (about $75,000) carried health insurance even before the Affordable Care Act. White socialism is nice if you can get it.

Companies can deduct the cost of their employees’ health insurance while employees are not required to report that benefit as income. That results in roughly a $400 billion annual transfer of funds from state and federal treasuries to insurers to provide coverage for the Americans least in need of assistance. This is one of the defining features of white socialism, the most generous benefits go to those who are best suited to provide for themselves. Those benefits are not limited to health care.

When I buy a house for my family, or a vacation home, the interest I pay on the mortgage is deductible up to a million dollars of debt. That costs the treasury $70 billion a year, about what we spend to fund the food stamp program. My private retirement savings are also tax deductible, diverting another $75 billion from government revenues. Other tax preferences carve out special treatment for child care expenses, college savings, commuter costs (your suburban tax credit), local taxes, and other exemptions.

By funding government programs with tax credits and deductions rather than spending, we have created an enormous social safety net that grows ever more generous as household incomes rise. It is important to note, though, that you need not be wealthy to participate. All you need to gain access to socialism for white people is a good corporate or government job. That fact helps explain how this welfare system took shape sixty years ago, why it was originally (and still overwhelmingly) white, and why white Rust Belt voters showed far more enthusiasm for Donald Trump than for Bernie Sanders. White voters are not interested in democratic socialism. They want to restore their access to a more generous and dignified program of white socialism.

In the years after World War II, the western democracies that had not already done so adopted universal social safety net programs. These included health care, retirement and other benefits. President Truman introduced his plan for universal health coverage in 1945. It would have worked much like Social Security, imposing a tax to fund a universal insurance pool. His plan went nowhere.

Instead, nine years later Congress laid the foundations of the social welfare system we enjoy today. They rejected Truman’s idea of universal private coverage in favor of a program controlled by employers while publicly funded through tax breaks. This plan gave corporations new leverage in negotiating with unions, handing the companies a publicly-financed benefit they could distribute at their discretion.

No one stated their intention to create a social welfare program for white people, specifically white men, but they didn’t need to. By handing control to employers at a time when virtually every good paying job was reserved for white men the program silently accomplished that goal.

White socialism played a vital political role, as blue collar factory workers and executives all pooled their resources for mutual support and protection, binding them together culturally and politically. Higher income workers certainly benefited more, but almost all the benefits of this system from health care to pensions originally accrued to white families through their male breadwinners. Blue collar or white collar, their fates were largely united by their racial identity and employment status.

Until the decades after the Civil Rights Acts, very few women or minorities gained direct access to this system. Unsurprisingly, this was the era in which white attitudes about the social safety net and the Democratic Party began to pivot. Thanks to this silent racial legacy, socialism for white people retains its disproportionately white character, though that has weakened. Racial boundaries are now less explicit and more permeable, but still today white families are twice as likely as African-Americans to have access to private health insurance. Two thirds of white children are covered by private health insurance, while barely over one third of black children enjoy this benefit.

White socialism has had a stark impact on the rest of the social safety net, creating a two-tiered system. Visit a county hospital to witness an example. American socialism for “everyone else” is marked by crowded conditions, neglected facilities, professionalism compromised by political patronage, and long waits for care. Fall outside the comfortable bubble of white socialism, and one faces a world of frightening indifference.

When Democrats respond to job losses with an offer to expand the public safety net, blue collar voters cringe and rebel. They are not remotely interested in sharing the public social safety net experienced by minority groups and the poorest white families. Meanwhile well-employed and affluent voters, ensconced in their system of white socialism, leverage all the power at their disposal to block any dilution of their expensive public welfare benefits. Something has to break.

We may one day recognize that we are all “in it together” and find ways to build a more stable, sensible welfare system. That will not happen unless we acknowledge the painful and sometimes embarrassing legacy that brought us to this place. Absent that reckoning, unspoken realities will continue to warp our political calculations, frustrating our best hopes and stunting our potential.

Chris Ladd, former GOP Precinct Committeeman, author of The Politics of Crazy and creator of PoliticalOrphans.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/13/unspeakable-realities-block-universal-health-coverage-in-the-us/#444372fc186a

[garynsmith]

Natural Born Leaders: The Women in Charge at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach

While statistics from the National Association of REALTORS® show that 62 percent of REALTORS® are women, the broker and executive level of the real estate business is still predominantly occupied by men. Fortunately, the tides are turning and more women are taking their place among the industry’s upper echelon. At Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach, REALTORS® and Trident Group, this is nothing new, however, as four women head up key divisions of the organization: Joan Docktor, president of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach, REALTORS®; Barbara Griest, president of Trident Land Transfer Company; Marie Gayo, president of Trident Mortgage Company; and Kassie Erb, president of Fox & Roach Charities.

Make no mistake—hard work and superior skills earned these women their spots, not their gender. Recognized for their talents early on by senior leadership at the organization—including Chairman and CEO Larry Flick IV and Vice Chairman Gerry Griesser—Docktor, Griest, Gayo and Erb benefitted by being in an environment that nurtured their growth and shattered glass ceilings.

“We are fortunate at Fox & Roach and Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices as a whole because there are so many women who lead here,” says Docktor. “For any company, diversity in leadership is important. People from different backgrounds will increase any organization’s creativity and ability to grow, and women in leadership are part of that diversity.”

Nurturing Growth Regardless of Gender A 30-year veteran of the firm, Griest was the first of the four women to receive the title of president in 2006, after starting in the policy department, becoming a settlement officer, and then segueing into management in 2000.

“The organization has a lot of women and a lot of respect for women,” she explains. “Women bring a different perspective than men, and this form of diversity is important for any organization to have.”

According to Griest, her mentors were mostly men, including Griesser, Flick and Jim Waters. “It was good to have male mentors because in many ways, it’s still a man’s world,” says Griest. “It’s necessary for women to be open to how men think and go about doing things, just as it is for men to understand how women may go about things differently.”

While early in her career a woman in charge of operations took Gayo under her wing, it was Flick, Griesser and Larry Flick V who became her greatest supporters. “They gave me positive reinforcement and I felt no barriers to my professional development.”

For Docktor, her first mentor was another powerful woman: her sales manager when she first joined Fox & Roach as a sales associate in 1986.

“My sales office leader was smart, beautiful, and carried herself well—I wanted to mirror that,” recalls Docktor. “She believed in me and supported my desire to move into management. She introduced me to Larry Flick and showed me something that I believe is true for everyone—if you just venture outside your comfort zone, you will grow.”

Flick recognized Docktor’s potential and soon stepped into the role of her mentor. Docktor notes, “Larry always challenged me to grow and do more. He taught me that the difference between a good leader and a great leader was the execution of my goals. I learned under his guidance to strive for excellence in everything I do.”

As these women executives grew through the ranks, the support from Fox & Roach was ongoing, which was not the usual course of action at many firms.

According to Gayo, for instance, the mortgage banking industry had long been dominated by males at the top. “There are more females in mortgage operations, but more men in mortgage sales,” she explains. “When I first joined the company, I was interviewed by only men—I was the only woman at the table. I thought, ‘this is no different from any other organization;’ but now I see that differently. The ability for women to rise through the ranks says a lot about this company. That has not been the case at other companies I’ve worked for. Larry and Gerry always defer to my opinion and treat me no differently from other people.”

Erb also flourished under the mentorship and support of Fox & Roach’s male leadership, specifically Griesser and Avie Wheeler, the director of Fox & Roach Charities who showed Erb “the ropes” when she came on board in 2005.

“Avie treated me as an equal asset to Fox & Roach Charities, and introduced me to others that way,” recalls Erb. “We were a great team and he allowed me to grow into the professional person I am today. He had vast knowledge of the philanthropic nature of Fox & Roach and the foresight to start a charitable arm within a real estate company.”

Erb stepped into a leadership role in 2008 when Wheeler stepped aside, and then became president of Fox & Roach Charities when Griesser retired from the position in 2011. “The company trusted me to lead and grow their legacy of giving,” she explains. “They asked me to guide the Board of Trustees and do what was needed in the many communities we serve. They respected my leadership, opinions and ability.”

A Challenging Path for Women For women, the path to leadership in the real estate business can be a tough one to forge.

While women in sales positions were the norm throughout the early years of Docktor’s career, that quickly changed as she moved up the ranks. “When I first started in upper management, there were no other women at the time,” she recalls. “The men around me who were my peers had a really hard time accepting it. I had to prove that I could add value and that I cared about them as people. I came from a position of servant leadership and made sure that everyone had what they needed to grow their careers.”

Griest agrees that it was initially an adjustment for men to work with a woman in a leadership rank. “Men and women have different perspectives. Each has to understand the others’ perspective.”

While it may have taken time for the masses to get on board, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach is committed to its support of women.

“The fact that this article is being written and published speaks to how our company values women and what women can bring to a company,” says Erb. “Women are well represented in leadership roles throughout the company. We are people who know our culture, care about others, respect others and treat others the way we would want to be treated.”

Inspiring the Industry The female leadership at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach, REALTORS® and Trident Group serve as an inspiration for other women seeking to rise in real estate or in any business—and they offer some good advice, as well.

According to Griest, one of the most important things a woman looking to rise through the ranks should do is keep an open mind and listen. “Don’t overreact to situations and be willing to listen to other perspectives,” she advises. “This does not mean to never disagree, but to understand while being able to state your own opinion without backing down.”

For Docktor, finding the right mentor is essential for any woman seeking to rise into leadership. “Find a mentor who cares about you and can help you understand a lot more than just the technical aspects of your job,” she advises. “Find them within your business, but also outside of your business—there are so many life lessons you can learn.”

Erb’s advice boils down to one thing: passion. “Once you find a job you love and are good at, it is no longer a job—it’s your passion,” she explains. “Stay focused, determined and do your job to the best of your ability. It will not go unnoticed or under appreciated.”

Docktor also stresses the importance of giving back—as early as possible—to those coming up behind you. “Show them you care not just about what they do at work, but about them as people. It’s not the dollars they bring in, but the person they are. Business is relational, and the more relationships you can build, the better the outcome will be.”

For more information, please visit www.foxroach.com.

Maria Patterson is RISMedia’s executive editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at maria@rismedia.com.

For the latest real estate news and trends, bookmark RISMedia.com.

The post Natural Born Leaders: The Women in Charge at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach appeared first on RISMedia.

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Trump Signs Trade Deal With Canada and Mexico

WASHINGTON — President Trump signed the revised North American Free Trade Agreement into law on Wednesday, fulfilling a key campaign promise and bringing more than two years of tumultuous negotiations over the continent’s trade rules to a close.

The trade deal, now called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, updates the quarter-century-old NAFTA, with stronger protections for workers and the digital economy, expanded markets for American farmers and new rules to encourage auto manufacturing in North America.

“Today we are finally ending the NAFTA nightmare and signing into law the brand-new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement,” Mr. Trump said during a signing ceremony at the White House.

“For the first time in American history, we have replaced a disastrous trade deal that rewarded outsourcing with a truly fair and reciprocal trade deal that will keep jobs, wealth and growth right here in America,” he said.

The deal will restore certainty about the direction of the North American economy for the multitude of companies that depend on the rules to carry out their businesses. While the Trump administration reached an agreement with Canada and Mexico more than a year ago, it came after months of tense negotiations that included a threat by the president to leave Canada out of the deal completely.

And the agreement’s fate remained in question for most of the past year, given concerns among congressional Democrats, whose support was needed to approve the pact, that the new deal had not included strong enough provisions related to labor, the environment and access to pharmaceuticals.

The deal constitutes an important political victory for Mr. Trump and his second trade win of the month. The president signed an initial trade pact with China at the White House just two weeks ago, giving him crucial talking points as he heads into his re-election campaign. While his deals with China and other countries like Japan and South Korea are smaller than traditional trade agreements, Mr. Trump will be able to claim that he has renegotiated trade terms with countries responsible for more than half of American trade.

The president wasted little time in touting the new North American trade deal, calling it a “colossal victory” for farmers and factory workers and the “largest, fairest, most balanced and modern trade agreement ever achieved.”

Mr. Trump has long derided the original NAFTA, and he frequently threatened to rip it up entirely if Canada, Mexico or congressional Democrats would not agree to his new rules.

He came into office with an executive order drafted to begin the process of withdrawing from NAFTA and nearly signed it on several occasions. But more moderate advisers and business contacts repeatedly dissuaded the president from scrapping the deal.

The 26-year-old agreement, which was negotiated by the George Bush administration and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, has since become a political target, derided for encouraging American companies to move factories and jobs to Mexico.

Many economists have a more sanguine view of NAFTA’s legacy, saying the deal provided a positive, if small, benefit to American wages and employment. It allowed industries to reorganize their supply chains around North America and take advantage of the differing resources and strengths of the three countries. The deal helped to more than triple America’s trade with Canada and Mexico.

But the opening of borders has come at a cost. Some Americans, particularly those with less education, lost out as factories moved to Mexico, taking jobs with them.

Gordon Hanson, an economist at the Harvard Kennedy School, said studies have found that average incomes rose in all three countries as a result of the trade deal, though by a small magnitude. But the deal’s benefits were very unevenly distributed around the United States.

“We can certainly find places where jobs are lost as a result of increased trade with Mexico, as well as places where jobs were gained as a result of increased trade with Mexico,” Mr. Hanson said.

The government programs that were designed to help workers adjust to these changes proved to be a Band-Aid for a deep wound that never healed. As China’s 2001 entry into the global economy accelerated the loss of American factory jobs, NAFTA became a potent symbol for labor unions, many Democrats and Mr. Trump of where American trade policy went wrong.

The Trump administration began its renegotiation of NAFTA in August 2017 with harsh words for Canada and Mexico, with the president’s top trade adviser saying the pact had “fundamentally failed many, many Americans and needs major improvement.”

Talks were initially expected to wrap up by the end of 2017, but negotiations lingered well into the next year as officials from all three countries scrabbled over issues like dairy-market access, federal-government contracts and systems for settling trade disputes. Business groups were alarmed by several of Mr. Trump’s proposals, including the idea of injecting a “sunset provision” into the deal that could cause it to automatically expire.

The Trump administration also deployed hardball tactics with Canada and Mexico, placing tariffs on their steel and aluminum and threatening to tax their cars as well. In the final stages of negotiations, when the United States was at odds with Canada over issues like agriculture, Mr. Trump threatened to turn NAFTA into a bilateral deal with Mexico, leaving Canada out entirely.

At a meeting in Buenos Aires in November 2018, Mr. Trump joined the leaders of Canada and Mexico in signing the revised deal. But he still faced an uphill path to get the pact approved in Congress, particularly the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

“I hope he understands what he’s signing today,” Ms. Pelosi said at a news conference, holding up a fact sheet outlining the changes Democrats secured for labor, enforcement, environment and prescription drugs. “Just because he’s the person signing it would not be a reason we would not do something good for the American people”

On Capitol Hill, Democrats sought to remind people that the pact would not have won overwhelming bipartisan support without their changes, particularly the updates to labor enforcement.

“The only reason that the president is having a signing today is because of what we did as Democrats,” Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said at an infrastructure news conference.

Some Democrats were quick to point out that the deal being celebrated by Republicans at the White House was far more in line with Democratic priorities than with traditional conservative ones.

“It actually kind of puts a smile on my face,” said Representative Jimmy Gomez, Democrat of California, in an interview. “It’s ironic. They’re lauding the most progressive trade deal in the history of this country.”

“They should send her a box of chocolates,” Mr. Gomez said of Ms. Pelosi, who has a famous penchant for chocolate, particularly from California. “Dark. Ghirardelli.”

The new trade deal faces one final hurdle before it can go into effect: It still needs to be approved in Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government’s first action when Parliament resumed after an extended break on Monday was introducing legislation to carry out the trade pact, which it calls the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.

Because Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party does not hold a voting majority in the House of Commons, the bill will require opposition support to pass. All three major opposition parties have various complaints. But many local and provincial politicians, labor and business leaders are calling for quick approval, making the legislation’s defeat unlikely.

Chrystia Freeland, the deputy prime minister, urged the opposition parties to work with the government to pass the bill swiftly.

“This is a victory for all Canadians of every political persuasion and from all regions of our great country,” she said in a news conference.

Ian Austen contributed reporting from Ottawa.

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ACLU: Why have a forum on reparations in Charleston and why now?

Why have a forum on reparations in Charleston and why now?

This year marks 400 years since enslaved, kidnapped people were purchased by the forefathers and – mothers of America. Are the events that began 400 years ago connected to today? William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” 

On June 19, 2019, the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) held a forum on H.R. 40 in the historic Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, D.C. As a follow up to that event, NAARC and the ACLU are joining with the ACLU of South Carolina and Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream to sponsor a second forum on H.R. 40 and reparations entitled: From Enslavement to Reparations: A 400-Year Journey for Justice.  

The event will be held on Saturday, November 2nd at 1 pm at the Gaillard Center in Charleston, South Carolina.

Why Charleston?

The first step to any successful reparations program is a reckoning – acknowledging and addressing the effects of past mistakes. When you attempt to understand America’s 246-year history of enslaving Black people, it is critical to understand that the Civil War didn’t end white supremacy in America. Rather, it heralded in a new era of white supremacy in different forms – Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes, “separate but equal” being affirmed by the Supreme Court, redlining to prevent Blacks from becoming homeowners and the war on drugs ushering in mass incarceration. When trying to understand how these legacies of white supremacy have impacted America in 2019, there is no better place to begin than Charleston.

The American Slave Coast by Ned and Constance Sublette explains how Charleston played a key role in the two primary phases of the slave trade. Charleston’s location was an ideal landing place for ships carrying human cargo during the importation phase, which lasted until around 1808. The domestic breeding stage, which began after America outlawed the importation of enslaved people, helped maintain the slave populations through the mass rape of Black women to produce new slaves. . The American Slave Coast reminds us that many white plantation owners used the term “natural increase” to describe this horrific practice. The International African American Museum estimates that 80 percent of African Americans can trace their roots back to Charleston. 

Founded in 1670, Charleston was the 5th largest city in the country just 30 years later in 1700. By 1708, a census found that South Carolina was 42.5 percent white, 42.5 percent Black, and 15 percent enslaved Native American.

While the existence of slavery was never a question to the new American nation, who was going to profit from slavery was a matter of great concern. The newly ratified United States Constitution guaranteed that the “Migration or Importation of such persons” (enslaved human beings) could not be prohibited by Congress until 1808.

South Carolina was concerned that although a state could not pass a law prohibiting the trade until 1808, the Constitution itself could be amended before then South Carolina was concerned that because a state could not pass a law prohibiting the trade until 1808, the Constitution would be amended before then. South Carolina doubled down to protect its interests and found its answer in Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution which prevented any amendment of Article 1 Section 9 until 1808.  Not surprisingly, in 1807, South Carolina merchants imported the highest volume of enslaved people in any one-year period in the history of the North American slave trade. 

The trade routes and contacts that were used during the international trade continued to create wealth and privilege for white people in Charleston even after the international slave trade ended, via the domestic slave trade.

Charleston’s recent apology for the role it played in the buying and selling of enslaved people in America is a start, but not enough.  If Charleston – and America – is to truly have a reckoning with our past, action must follow the apology. For example, Charleston’s segregated schools and neighborhoods withstood the test of civil rights laws and the Fair Housing Act, and Charleston is still one of the most segregated cities in America. A jury in North Charleston refused to convict the police officer who murdered Walter Scott. Most recently, the murder of nine innocent African American churchgoers at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston are still painfully fresh in our collective consciousness.

Charleston continues to be proud of John C. Calhoun, who was a prominent South Carolina politician for almost three decades. Calhoun also was a proud racist who made it clear that he saw a major difference between white people and Black people being quoted as saying, “with us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals, if honest and industrious; and hence have a position and pride of character of which neither poverty nor misfortune can deprive them.”” Calhoun also believed that the freedom of one race depended on the bondage of the other. “I fearlessly assert that the existing relation between the two races in the South, against which these blind fanatics are waging war, forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions.” 

The Gaillard Center in downtown Charleston, where this forum will be hosted, shares a disturbing commonality with Mother Emanuel AME Church – they are both located on Calhoun Street. The remains of enslaved people were also found in the 2013 structural renovations of the Gaillard Center. It’s clear that in Charleston, the past is not dead – it’s alive and well.

Why Now?

The arguments in favor of reparations have been known and recognized for decades. Individual efforts began immediately following the Civil War. Members of the National African American Reparations Commission have fought for reparations since before Representative John Conyers introduced H.R. 40 for the first time in 1988. This is not a new struggle, so what is different now?

The advocacy of those who have been engaged in the struggle for reparations for decades have worked like water on stone, never letting the potential promise of reparations die. Additionally, new voices have added to the movement for America’s reckoning with its past. Ta-Nehisi Coates article “The Case for Reparations” continues to impact people. Groups like Movement for Black Lives and efforts like The 1619 Project from the New York Times have brought new ideas to the table. H.R. 40 now has 118 cosponsors – before this year it never had more than 52.

Much of the critique of the renewed light shone on the history of enslaved people by projects like the New York Times 1619 Project can be put into two broad categories: 1) Why do you hate America? 2) Reparations would unfairly hold people accountable for something they never did or benefitted from.  Here is why both are wrong.

Some people confuse critiquing America with hating America. True love allows for and encourages criticism, especially when it relates to an issue like racial justice. The refusal to look at our history and our present circumstance in order to find the unvarnished truth is a betrayal of the principles our country claims to hold dear. At the end of the day, you cannot support reparations unless you truly love America. Not a superficial love, but rather the kind of love that demands that we face the truth because we will be better for it.

What about the complaint that the Civil War ended 154 years ago and Blacks in America need to get over it?  Our history is full of proof that demonstrates the legacy of slavery has had a continual impact on criminal law, economic and educational opportunity, access to quality health care, and housing in America. This objection is countered by the provisions of H.R. 40. Before there can be any recommendations about reparations, a committee will have to investigate our history to see if the facts justify a system of reparations and let the truth come out.

In We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke to the true reason why a caricature has been made of the movement for reparations. He said, “Mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter”. It’s time for our country to quit hiding behind that mask of fear and finally reckon with our past.

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